It is known in the art to bag, package, cover or wrap certain products, such as bundles of lumber, in order to protect them from the external environment, such as UV radiation, and preserve an appropriate degree of humidity. Apparatuses for loading forestry, agriculture or other products into stretchable plastic tubes or films have been provided. Traditional systems can be labor intensive at the mill site, and can also result in the ingress of moisture through rips and perforations. Therefore some later improvements in bagging such goods provided apparatuses having a support board with a stretch film and moveable fingers in horizontal and vertical directions for picking up this film and covering the stack or bundle of products.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,032,439 issued to Birkenfeld et al, on Mar. 7, 2000 teaches an apparatus for covering articles on a support palet with a stretch film. The apparatus includes at least four reefing fingers that are movable in the horizontal and vertical directions for picking up the film in four corners and covering the rectangular bundle.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,662,535 issued to Pin on Dec. 16, 2003 teaches an apparatus for bagging material into a stretchable bag having an open end. This apparatus includes a movable bag stretching structure movable between a first position for receiving the bag and a second position for holding the bag in a stretched state. The apparatus further includes bag gripping members for turning the bag inside out over the movable bag stretching structure. The movable bag stretching structure is displaced towards a facing side of the material while being held in a stretched state. This continuous displacement causes the bag to be inverted onto the material for covering thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,978,587 issued to Drolet on Dec. 27, 2005 provides an apparatus and a method for the automated wrapping of a bundle with a resilient stretchable film. This patent teaches an apparatus and method which provides for unrolling a desired length of film and cutting this desired length. The film includes two overlapping panels. The edges of the open side are grasped and opened and the opened tube is loaded onto an expandable frame. At least a portion of the tube is accumulated on this expandable frame in a folded condition. The expandable frame then stretched the tube and the bundle of material is then covered by this tube made of film.
The cited references above are incorporated herein by reference.
A drawback of the above systems is that they are relatively expensive and require a lot of space to be installed. A drawback of the known systems is that they are inconvenient.